bad rap

[victor steinbok]

Sepia is cuttlefish, hence the connection with cuttlefish "ink", which
had been used as actual ink, at some point, and whose color is
imitated by other writing/drawing inks, and it is this latter that
would have been referenced in this "synonym". Squid/cuttlefish/octopus
ink is fairly dark, nearly black for squid, purple-black for most
octopus species and dark brown for cuttlefish (in its concentrated
state), but in the form where it might have been used for ink, it
would have been closer to somewhat lighter brown. And the fake sepia
ink is an even lighter shade of brown or brown-gray, which is how the
color derives its name. There is something rather ironic about this
denomination being "fashionable". To add to this irony, old
photographs tend to fade to brown-gray tones, giving rise to the
"sepia effect" in photography, which is used to imitate old
photographs.

VS-)


On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 12:11 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
...
> BTW, _sepia_ as a synonym for _negro, colored, Negro, ebon(y), black,
> Afro-American_, etc., etc. was once quite fashionable. E.g., the
> newsreels seen in the colored picture-shows were The March of Time
> *and* the _SepiaTone News_ and even the movie shorts of the day aimed
> at colored audiences - they featured various black people in the
> entertainment business: Louis Jordan, Lucky Millinder, Bullmoose
> Jackson, the Duke, the Count, Bill "bojangles" Robinson, Machito,
> Perez Prado (not sure that he considered himself to be black, but he
> was regarded by black journalists as black), Dizzy Gillespie, plus
> various athletes, usually boxers and the Harlem Globetrotters - were
> quite often in sepiatone instead of in B&W.

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